Reading
69
READING PASSAGE 3
You should spend about 20 minutes on
Questions 26-40
which are based on Reading Passage 3 below
.
Hormone levels - and hence our moods -may
be affected by the weather. Gloomy weather
can cause depression, but sunshine appears to
raise the spirits. In Britain, for example, the
dull weather of winter drastically cuts down
the amount of sunlight that is experienced
which strongly affects some people. They
become so depressed and lacking in energy
that their work and social life are affected.
This condition has been given the name SAD
(Seasonal Affective Disorder). Sufferers can
fight back by making the most of any sunlight
in winter and by spending a few hours each
day under special, full-spectrum lamps. These
provide more ultraviolet and blue-green light
than ordinary fluorescent and tungsten lights.
Some Russian scientists claim that children
learn better after being exposed to ultraviolet
light. In warm countries, hours of work are
often arranged so that workers can take a
break, or even a siesta, during the hottest part
of the day. Scientists are working to discover
the links between the weather and human
beings’ moods and performance.
It is generally believed that tempers grow
shorter in hot, muggy weather. There is no
doubt that ‘crimes against the person’ rise in
the summer, when the weather is hotter and
fall in the winter when the weather is colder.
Research in the United States has shown a
relationship between temperature and street
riots. The frequency of riots rises dramatically
as the weather gets warmer, hitting a peak
around 27-30°C. But is this effect really due to
a mood change caused by the heat? Some
scientists argue that trouble starts more often
in hot weather merely because there are more
people in the street when the weather is good.
Psychologists have also studied how being
cold affects performance.
Researchers
compared divers working in icy cold water at
5°C with others in water at 20°C (about
swimming pool temperature). The colder
water made the divers worse at simple
arithmetic and other mental tasks. But
significantly, their performance was impaired
as soon as they were put into the cold water -
before their bodies had time to cool down.
This suggests that the low temperature did
not slow down mental functioning directly,
but the feeling of cold distracted the divers
from their tasks.
:: Collected by PhaKaKrong < cd_toefl@hotmail.com>::
Test 3
70
Psychologists have conducted studies
showing that people become less sceptical and
more optimistic when the weather is sunny
However, this apparently does not just
depend on the temperature. An American
psychologist studied customers in a
temperature-controlled restaurant. They gave
bigger tips when the sun was shining and
smaller tips when it wasn’t, even though the
temperature in the restaurant was the same. A
link between weather and mood is made
believable by the evidence for a connection
between behaviour and the length of the
daylight hours. This in turn might involve the
level of a hormone called melatonin,
produced in the pineal gland in the brain. The
amount of melatonin falls with greater
exposure to daylight.
Research shows that
melatonin plays an important part in the
seasonal behaviour of certain animals. For
example, food consumption of stags increases
during the winter, reaching a peak in
February/ March. It falls again to a low point
in May, then rises to a peak in September,
before dropping to another minimum in
November. These changes seem to be
triggered by varying melatonin levels.
In the laboratory, hamsters put on more
weight when the nights are getting shorter
and their melatonin levels are falling. On the
other hand, if they are given injections of
melatonin, they will stop eating altogether. It
seems that time cues provided by the
changing lengths of day and night trigger
changes in animals’ behaviour - changes that
are needed to cope with the cycle of the
seasons. People’s moods too, have been
shown to react to the length of the daylight
hours. Sceptics might say that longer exposure
to sunshine puts people in a better mood
because they associate it with the happy
feelings of holidays and freedom from
responsibility. However, the belief that rain
and murky weather make people more
unhappy is borne out by a study in Belgium,
which showed that a telephone counselling
service gets more telephone calls from people
with suicidal feelings when it rains.
When there is a thunderstorm brewing, some
people complain of the air being ‘heavy’ and
of feeling irritable, moody and on edge. They
may be reacting to the fact that the air can
become slightly positively charged when large
thunderclouds are generating the intense
electrical fields that cause lightning flashes.
The positive charge increases the levels of
serotonin (a chemical involved in sending
signals in the nervous system). High levels of
serotonin in certain areas of the nervous
system make people more active and reactive
and,
possibly, more aggressive. When certain
winds are blowing, such as the Mistral in
southern France and the Fohn in southern
Germany, mood can be affected - and the
number of traffic accidents rises. It may be
significant that the concentration of positively
charged particles is greater than normal in
these winds. In the United Kingdom, 400,000
ionizers are sold every year. These small
machines raise the number of negative ions in
the air in a room. Many people claim they feel
better in negatively charged air.
:: Collected by PhaKaKrong < cd_toefl@hotmail.com>::
